Space Station Genesis: History, Glossary and FAQ

Space Station Genisis: A Brief History

Author

Gidion Gates

* Prologue
* The ten most frequently asked questions:
+ Does old Earth really exist?
+ Does Terra (New Earth) really exist?
+ Terra exists, but it is really a desolate, barren planet?
+ Do we really have enough fuel to make it a thousand
light years across the galaxy?
+ Isn't Genesis really a leftover planatary fragment
from earth after it was blown up during World War III?
+ The Admiral is really the "boss" and the President is
just his puppet?
+ An alien life form has been stalking Genesis and
may attack any day?
+ Admiral Richards has been taken over by an alien life
form and is steering Genesis to THEIR home world where
we will all be enslaved?
+ Genesis actually has room for another fifty thousand
colonists, and President Goldberg is restricting births
based on his own agenda?
+ Why can't we hollow out more of Genesis to make room for
more births?

Prologue:
Admiral Richards asked me to put together an informal history and FAQ for my class project. He has grown increasingly alarmed by the misinformation being spread around the station by the rumor mill and certain netloid publications (which we won't mention here, but one of them recently published a picture of Ensign Tanaka in the buff!).

The following is an ACCURATE and TRUTHFUL collection of data about Genesis and some of the history that proceeded the construction of our new home. Due to the crash of '39, putting all of this together wasn't as easy a task as it may seem. A lot of online data was lost during the outage. Not only was the data knocked off, but the catalogs were corrupted, which means I've had to load the crystals pretty much on a hit or miss basis.

I'd like to thank Clark Richman, Cynthia Horowitz, Henry Wang and Ivan Popov for helping me out with this project and, of course, the Admiral for subsidizing it.

The ten most frequently asked questions.

1) Does old Earth really exist?

Yes! Despite what the onboard conspiracy theorists would have you believe (take note Oliver Rock!) we were:

1) NOT spontainously warped into the center of this asteroid.

2) We did not evolve in the center of this asteroid (before us there was no organic material in here!)

3) We were NOT left here as prisoners by some alien race as punishement for our crimes (as put forth by various religious groups).

4) We did not crash here aboard a REAL space ship and retrofit the asteroid.

It should be noted that we only lost communication with old Earth within the last fifty years. This is because
the Varsian Nebula (which we passed through), is screening out most of the signals from old earth. Occasionally a coherent image gets through, but Captain Richards tells me it looks like a looped message.

2)Does Terra (New Earth for some) really exist?

Yes! Why do you think we're on this rock anyway! The rumors of Terra's destruction are greatly exaggerated. We've been monitoring Terra ever since we left Sol's orbit in 2111 and it's still there (despite what the Netloids and Oliver say).

3)Terra exists, but it is really a desolate, barren planet.

Wrong! Yes, old Earth was over populated when we left, but they weren't THAT desperate to get rid of a measly half million colonists. Terra was extensively
researched by ALL of the various orbital telescopes on the rim of old Earth's solar system. Before we ever left, exhaustive observations proved that Terra is a lush green planet very close to the way Earth was around a hundred million years ago. Yes, it is true that those observations were around a thousand years old (Terra, is as you may or may not know is about a thousand light years away), but our ongoing observations aboard Genesis demonstrate that things haven't changed much in blahblah years.

4)Do we really have enough fuel to make it a thousand light years across the galaxy?

Yes, for two reasons:

1) We're already moving at half light speed. There is no friction in the perfect
vacuum of space (well, near perfect anyway). Unless we run into something that will
slow us down (a planet? Just kidding! Yes, we can steer Genesis; that's why we pay the
Admiral and Crew.) We're already moving at a speed to make Genesis in 2611.

2) The main thrusting lasers are powered by fusion reactors (as is everything else in this
place). The fusion reactors are powered by hydrogen. We collect hydrogen as we move
through space with several collectors mounted on the outside of the ship. Yes, it is true
that we are currently using more than we are collecting (the storage tanks are down to half full; Oliver would say half empty) but we've gone through dry spells before without a problem.

5)Isn't Genesis really a leftover planatary fragment from Earth after it was blown up during World War III?

Not bloody likely, primarly because there never was a WWIII (despite what Oliver's paranoid followers believe). See the section on Genesis' particulars later on in this webument.

6) The Admiral is really the "boss" and the President is just his puppet.

Wrong! The Admiral has ALWAYS reported to the President. The president
is, of course, elected by us, so this still is a democracy folks. It is interesting to note that the UEFdecided the best way to maintain this balance of power was to make security report to the President and the crew report to the Admiral. That's also why they wear different uniforms.

7)An alien life form has been stalking Genesis and may attack any day.

True! That's right! We've been attacked by the aliens, although, you'll probably find it
fairly difficult to communicate with them! When we passed through the Varsian Nebula
we picked up a virus. Doctor Peter Stepenopolos confirmed that the genetic makeup was
extraterrestrial. Obviously the virus is harmless to us, but it seems to have found a nice
home underneath the main thrusters on the OUTSIDE of the ship.

8) Admiral Richards has been taken over by a alien life forms and is steering Genesis to THEIR home world where we will all be enslaved.

Admiral Richards wanted me to mention that, although he may look like he's been taken over by aliens before his morning cup of coffee, it hasn't happened yet.

9)Genesis actually has room for another fifty thousand colonists, and President Goldberg is restricting births based on his own agenda.

Who comes up with this stuff!? Have you folks walked around Genesis recently? We are maxed out guys. If it gets any more crowded, they're going to start rotating quarters based on sleep cylces (by the way, the crew is already doing this). Genesis was originally designed for "around" one million residents, with 4,900 cubic meters per person. The last census has us at 1,153,123. We're 650 million cubic meters over spec!

10)Why can't we hollow out more of Genesis to make room for more births?

We could certainly hollow out more of Genesis. Of course, you better like cosmic rays, meteorites of various sizes and severity and several kinds of previously undocumented anomolous effects (Corp. Victor Rodriquez was "phased" with the surface five years ago). There's a good reason we have eighteen kilometers of rock between us and space.